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America, and Germany. Private corporations are almost taxed out of existence, and tend therefore to pass into the hands of the state. The whole spirit of the civilization is to multiply direction and control, for the Frenchman is inherently averse to taking responsibility. Immense complexity of business methods and multiplication of the personnel in all undertakings result, and in turn make individual management impossible, and with this, successful adaptation to new conditions, rapid and effective transaction of business, and economical procedure. The necessary failure under these circumstances forces business enterprises to look for continually increasing state aid, until the natural conclusion would be the absorption of all in the hands of the collectivity, as the railroads have already been absorbed. Thus Latin society is the natural soil out of which socialism springs, while, on the other hand, the inevitable weakness, the loosening of all the cords of energetic activity, the rooting out of all initiative and progress, which the author is convinced must result from the inauguration of any socialistic state, may be illustrated, in embryo at least, in the present French conditions. The book is a reciprocal criticism of France and socialism. The criticism of socialism is not in any sense novel, and is sufificiently indicated above. The illustration from present French conditions is interesting, but if it is possible to judge the accuracy of his generalizations of the French situation from his state- ment of that in .America, large deductions must be made. As a picture, however, of the weak side of French character the drawing is effective and striking. As an indication of the repression of individual initia- tive and the control that the socialistic programist calls for, the illustration from French conditions is most instructive.
But the programists represent but one phase of socialistic theory, and one which, as M. Le Bon recognizes, is passing in Germany and has quite passed among that brilliant coterie, the Fabian Society, in England. The socialists are becoming opportunists. They are losing confidence in any delineation of the future condition of society — any "vision given in the mount" — and are coming to clearer conscious- ness of the force that lies behind socialism ; and with this consciousness come heightened insight into many conditions of modern times and better standpoints from which to criticise such movements as the organi- zation of labor. For example, it is socialistic thought and thinking that opens the minds of the laborers to the fact that the wage and working-day are the result of all the forces and conditions out of which the fabric of civilization springs, and cannot be the simple dictum of employers and
